the vacant night
by charliespike18
Summary: For a moment he doesn't understand what the other man is talking about - what experience has Jackson got, what turn of events makes him qualified to discuss the resurrection of a sister? But then he realises; it wasn't a little sister, it was a little boy with his father's eyes. Post 14x02 Owen and Jackson discuss grief. (Companion to Race to Erase and we come undone)


There's a party go on downstairs but Owen isn't in the mood. The curtains are half open, the moonlight ghosting through. The room is dark bar the light filtering past the door from the hallway. A faint buzz of chatter reaches out to him, an old friend, and in a way he wants to wrap himself around it; ignore the things ricocheting around his head. But it's not that easy. It never is.

'Owen?' comes a voice from the corridor. He turns, the beer bottle clasped in his hands swinging precariously. He seems drunk, but he isn't. It's something else; emotion, he thinks, slowing him down, pulling his senses away.

It's Jackson in the doorway and they regard each other for a second. A muffled cry comes from somewhere and it takes him a second to realise that it is Harriet, carried in her father's arms. Owen stares at the little girl for a moment, entranced. In the end, he has to look away.

'April said...' he stammers in reply to Jackson's confusion. It's not a very good excuse, but his mind is refusing to cooperate. His head is a mess, he thinks - today has been one of those days. He saw Megan this morning. It still feels so very odd to think about; for such a long time his sister had been a memory, ever fading - a still image caught at the end of a dream, fuzzy and out of focus.

But she is alive.

'Are you okay?' It's Jackson again, setting Harriet down on the ground. The little girl meanders across the flaw towards the window, falls against his legs.

Owen shrugs, takes a gulp of beer. No one has asked him that question since his sister reappeared. He knows what the expected answer is, and of course he feels that - he _is_ happy. But there's something else, a melancholia sinking it. He'd blame it on the beer but he hasn't drunk enough.

Amelia was suppose to be here, he thinks, but she isn't. Something at the hospital had pulled her back, as always seems to be the way. He wants to talk, to have it out, but Megan has been taking up so much of his energy that it seems he doesn't even have time to breathe for Amelia anymore.

'They don't tell you about this bit,' Jackson says as Owen stoops to look at the little girl sprawled across the carpet. For a moment he doesn't understand what the other man is talking about - what experience has Jackson got, what turn of events makes him qualified to discuss the resurrection of a sister? But then he realises; it wasn't a little sister, it was a little boy with his daddy's eyes.

Samuel, with his barely there life, is what makes Jackson brave tonight.

'Which bit?' Owen says, eyes still on Harriet. She is the second chance, the way Owen now has his with Megan. It's different, of course, but so much of the emotion is still the same.

'That you feel like you gave up, and you hate yourself for it.' There's a pause, Owen dangles a teddy bear above Harriet, the moonshine refracting against the door handle, spilling ghosts into the room. 'When she was born,' he continues and Owen still refuses to meet his gaze. It would be too intense, he knows already, too much, 'I thought it would fix the hole inside of me. But it didn't.'

A pause, Owen glances up. He nods slowly, having finally found someone who understands - someone who is able to articulate that feeling in his chest; the one that drew him up here on the day Megan has finally been mended.

There is too much sadness for what should be a happy time. Everything, he thinks, will always be tinged, just a little, by the pain that was felt in the intervening years - the time between Megan going missing and her rebirth; between Samuel's death and Harriet's arrival. The second helps to repair the break made by the first, but he thought, like Jackson did, that all of that anger and pain and hurt would just fall away and be replaced. By what he isn't sure, never has been, but in his dreams just seeing he would be enough.

And it wasn't.

He got his sister back. Jackson got his child. But at what cost?

Owen knows its selfish on his behalf, surely he should just be happy - shut up shop and carry on. But no, it isn't that easy, he isn't even allowed this. Jackson sees, Owen thinks - he realises that second chances are rarely that; they are not a second attempt - they are completely different, and bring with them their own challenges and feelings that are so very hard to bury. Becuase the world expects you to be happy.

Not that he isn't, not that Jackson wasn't when his daughter was brought into this world; but seeing his sister again broke his heart. He moved on in the aftermath, carved a new life, tried desperately to forget he had ever had another existence.

He became an only child, and that was so very odd to hear. He had a sister, and then she went missing and he didn't have one anymore, it seemed, to the world at large. It was the same for Jackson; a father, yes, but when Samuel died he wasn't anymore.

And then Harriet was born and Megan came back and the titles, use once so confidently, were returned. But they didn't seem to fit the same way they did before, but Owen guesses that it's just time, playing its old tricks again.

Owen goes to say something, eyes raised from Harriet one more time, but before the words fall from his mouth a figure appears behind Jackson. He can't make out who it is for a moment, shadow thrown over like a shall, but he blinks away the darkness and sees Maggie. She freezes, eyes darting between the two men, standing like statues in the gloom.

Owen sees that she is aware that her footsteps, as quiet as silence, have disrupted something. What it was, he doesn't know, nor could he explain it if someone asked him.

She fumbles, stutters, turns to leave but Jackson smiles, claps his hands together and with a glance into the darkness, makes his way to the corridor.

A moment passes, the chatter from below louder now, encroaching on the quiet they created here. Owen stares down at Harriet, picks her up and, without pause, heads for the light.

He looks down at her little face, and feels a smile crack across his lips.

'We're strong,' he says to Harriet. 'We'll get through this.'


End file.
